Kalimpong Calling

Hanging

The sixth essay from my 2002 book Kalimpong Calling.

You may have travelled to Darjeeling, seated precariously in the rear of a shared jeep, clutching the straps benevolently provided by transport people. The local term for this cramped mode of travel is chamarey an apt description when you consider the bat-like disposition of the long-suffering occupant in the backseat.

Indeed, the rear seat is dark and claustrophobic. Your view is not of where the vehicle is going, but of the unfortunate passengers opposite, whose faces contorted by the twists of the road make you acutely aware of what almost inevitably follows: vomiting. The serpentine stretch from the 6th Mile up to Darjeeling town has humbled many. I have great empathy for children and adults alike who succumb to this undignified but necessary biological urge.

In these design-conscious times, the sight of your breakfast amorphously redeployed on the jeep door is humiliating. Sometimes people don’t even get their heads out in time, offloading instead onto someone’s back or into their own handkerchiefs. No transport syndicate has yet had the foresight to provide sickness bags, though antihistamines are easily available — if only sporadically effective. I even heard of a lady for whom the mere sight of a bus ticket was enough to induce nausea, as early as the eve of her journey.

It’s no wonder people experiment with remedies: lemons, titauras (dried fruit snacks), and other talismans. But beware — travelling on an empty stomach is a bad idea. When the road conspires against you, it helps to have something to throw up.

For me, the only real cure for backseat misery is to go “hanging.” This is one of many English words deliciously absorbed into Nepali. (Another is “second,” as in second bhayo, meaning to lose out.)

Hanging is simple. You stand on the tailboard of the jeep and cling to the bars of the luggage rack on top. Here, it is a different world from the nauseous misery inside. You feel as free as on a motorbike — the sky above, the wind sweeping your face, the freedom to look back at places and people receding behind you. Of course, people say it is dangerous, and rightly so. The police discourage it. Transport syndicates discourage it. There are tree branches to graze, wires to electrocute, and the ever-present risk of losing your grip.

But to me, the greatest danger is the urge to jump off if you distrust the driver’s control. Hanging confers a twilight identity: you are never fully part of the jeep. You pay less than the seated passengers, you don’t share their gossip, and you can’t ask the driver to stop so you can pick up fresh niulis at Lamahatta. Yet perhaps it is precisely this in-between existence — vulnerable but free — that appeals to those with acute backseat-phobia. It is, all things considered, not a bad bargain.